81% of Indian marketers adopt AI, but data gaps hold back personalised engagement: Salesforce report

Artificial intelligence has become a core part of marketing strategies in India, with 81% of marketers now using AI in their operations. However, fragmented customer data and disconnected systems continue to limit the technology's ability to deliver meaningful customer engagement, according to Salesforce's tenth edition of its State of Marketing report.The study, which is based on responses from 250 marketing decision-makers in India, found that while marketers are increasingly relying on AI to personalise customer interactions, success depends on the quality and accessibility of customer data rather than AI adoption alone.The report shows a growing shift in customer expectations. Nearly 92% of marketers said consumers now expect brands to engage in two-way conversations instead of one-way promotional messaging. However, 71% admitted they struggle to respond quickly because they lack access to complete customer context across different business functions.Salesforce said marketers with unified customer data are already seeing measurable advantages. Those satisfied with their data foundations are 1.4 times more likely to regularly respond to customers and 1.6 times more likely to use AI agents to scale customer engagement compared with organisations operating on fragmented data.Also read: India's digital economy: Where the country ranks across 8 global indicesNishant Kalra, Vice President – Sales, Salesforce South Asia, said that data quality has emerged as the defining factor for successful AI-led marketing."The biggest barrier to personalization today isn't AI, it's the quality and connectedness of the data that powers it. As AI agents become the next frontier of marketing, organizations need a trusted, unified view of the customer to deliver contextual, real-time engagement at scale," he said.The report found that marketers are increasingly willing to rely on AI for customer-facing activities. Around 86% said they would trust AI to respond to customers to help scale engagement, while 83% said they require more personalised content than they can currently produce. Nearly the same proportion (81%) are already using AI to bridge that content gap, with content personalisation emerging as the most common use case.Despite widespread adoption, marketers continue to face significant implementation challenges. Salesforce reported that 98% of respondents encounter barriers to personalisation, with regulations and privacy concerns, poor-quality or unstructured data, and limited technical expertise ranking among the biggest obstacles.Cross-functional data access also remains incomplete. Only 60% of marketers reported having full access to customer service data, while 61% have complete access to sales data and 58% to commerce data, making it harder to build a unified customer view.The research also points to changing customer discovery patterns as generative AI becomes more prevalent. Nearly half of marketers said they have yet to adapt their strategies to widespread AI adoption, while 66% reported struggling to keep pace with evolving customer behaviour.At the same time, marketers are increasingly preparing for AI-driven search experiences. According to the report, 91% said AI is reshaping their search engine optimisation strategy, while 92% have already started optimising content for AI-generated responses, including platforms such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews. High-performing marketing teams were found to be 2.2 times more likely than underperforming organisations to have adopted Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies.The report also found that marketers using AI agents report stronger data connectivity across customer touchpoints. Around 76% of organisations using AI agents said they were satisfied with their ability to connect customer interactions across channels, compared with 55% among those not using AI. High-performing marketers were also 1.7 times more likely to have unified customer data and to use that information to create relevant customer experiences.The findings are based on Salesforce's global survey conducted between October and November 2025, which gathered responses from 4,450 marketing decision-makers across multiple regions, including 250 respondents from India.